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Articles Posted by BenLurkin

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  • Lockheed Martin to acquire United Technologies’ Sikorsky Aircraft Unit

    07/19/2015 7:44:35 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 14 replies
    theglobeandmail.com ^ | Sunday, Jul. 19, 2015 5:01PM EDT | ANDREA SHALAL and LEWIS KRAUSKOPF
    It will be Lockheed’s largest acquisition since it bought Martin Marietta Corp. for about $10-billion two decades ago, and the first major strategic move for both United Tech chief executive officer Greg Hayes, who was elevated to CEO from finance chief in November, and Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson, who has been in that position since January, 2013. Officials at United Technologies and Lockheed declined comment. Textron Inc. had submitted a bid for Sikorsky, but dropped out of the bidding after the price rose, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Pentagon officials last week said they would carefully evaluate...
  • Angry protesters in Chattanooga: When’s the government going to do something?

    07/19/2015 6:12:14 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 50 replies
    Proxmire stood across from the bullet-riddled Armed Forces Recruiting Center, one of two military sites attacked by the gunman last week. She brushed back a strand of sweat-soaked hair and sobbed. Her son had been dead for barely one day. Around her people were screaming. “I can’t believe these people even come here to this country!” one woman yelled. “Why do they come here?” “Because they want to kill us,” another man answered. ... The agitated crowd, many of them carrying holstered pistols, wanted to know why the Obama administration and the military weren’t doing more to kill Islamist extremists...
  • At least 57 civilians killed in rocket attack blamed on Houthis in Yemen

    07/19/2015 5:06:08 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 12 replies
    fox news latino ^ | July 19, 2015/
    The attack, which struck a residential zone of the coastal city, also caused damage to several markets and homes in the Dar Saad neighborhood. Witnesses told EFE that the rockets were fired from the Yasuala zone, which is controlled by combatants with the Shiite Houthis and militias loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who are fighting in the rebel ranks. ... The attack took place three days after the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced the arrival in Aden of a ministerial delegation from Riyadh with the aim of reestablishing the government's seat in the city after...
  • Manage, meddle or magnify? China's corporate debt threat

    07/19/2015 12:55:01 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 1 replies
    reuters.com ^ | Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:23pm EDT | Umesh Desai
    Beijing may have averted a crisis in its stock markets with heavy-handed intervention, but the world's biggest corporate debt pile - $16.1 trillion and rising - is a much greater threat to its slowing economy and will not be so easily managed. Corporate China's debts, at 160 percent of GDP, are twice that of the United States, having sharply deteriorated in the past five years.... And the debt mountain is set to climb 77 percent to $28.8 trillion over the next five years, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's estimates. [ID:nL4N0ZV68I] Beijing's policy interventions affecting corporate credit have so far...
  • Watch a Surfing Champion Fend Off a Shark By Punching It

    07/19/2015 10:11:02 AM PDT · by BenLurkin · 17 replies
    Time ^ | Justin Worland
    Fanning, who escaped the incident uninjured, was knocked off of his surfboard at the beginning of his heat when he realized a shark was attacking. Following expert guidance, Fanning punched the shark to scare it off. “It kept coming at my board and I was kicking and screaming. I just saw fins. I didn’t see teeth,” he said, according to a Australian news outlet. “I was waiting for the teeth to come at me. I punched it in the back.”
  • What does a pentaquark mean for you?

    07/18/2015 3:40:12 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 37 replies
    theguardian.com ^ | Jon Butterworth
    Because perturbation theory doesn’t work, it is very hard to predict the consequences of the strong force. One thing we do know is that the binding energy of the strong force which holds the quarks together inside them is responsible for almost all of the mass of protons and neutrons, and hence almost all of the mass of you. Calculations on supercomputers (such as the DiRAC facility in the UK) use “lattice” methods to make calculations when perturbation theory doesn’t work. These involve approximating the space-time continuum by a lattice of discrete points and events; they are now able to...
  • Let the Pluto conspiracy theories begin! Internet erupts with claims that New Horizons visit is...

    07/18/2015 11:45:22 AM PDT · by BenLurkin · 49 replies
    dailymail.co.uk ^ | Richard Gray
    Whenever mankind achieves something extraordinary that pushes the boundaries of what is possible, there are some naysayers who refuse to believe it has happened. It turns out there are some out there who think that Nasa has faked the stunning images of Pluto and its moons sent back by the New Horizons space craft this week. Rather than marvelling at the extraordinary detail they have revealed of mountains of ice, craters and canyons on Pluto’s surface, they instead insist it is all an elaborate lie. One individual, who calls himself Crrow ...used images from his own telescope in his back...
  • ISIS claims suicide car bomb that kills over 100 in Iraq

    07/17/2015 9:58:22 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 11 replies
    haaretz ^ | Jul. 18, 2015 | 12:49 AM
    The force of the blast brought down several buildings in Khan Bani Saad, about 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Baghdad, crushing to death people who were celebrating the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, police and medics said. Islamic State, which controls large parts of northern and western Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack in the mixed eastern province of Diyala where Khan Bani Saad is located and said the target was "rejectionists", as the group refers to Shi'ite Muslims. Angry crowds went on the rampage after the explosion, smashing the windows of cars parked in the...
  • LAX police use social media in search for newlyweds who lost wedding album

    07/17/2015 3:37:00 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 6 replies
    dailybreeze.com ^ | Larry Altman
    It belongs to Safiullah Jabar Khil and his bride, Halimi. He wore a black tuxedo with white shirt. She wore a white dress, a tiara and carried red flowers. Where they are, nobody knows. According to writing on the album, they married March 12, 2012 at the Qasr e Oranus Wedding Hall, which appears on the Internet to be a grand building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Their photos were taken by Yama Ramin Media Production, which has its website, telephone numbers and email addresses listed on the album. Airport officers tried contacting the company, but the distance, communication and distrust on...
  • Rising Rents Won’t Inflate Fear at Fed

    07/17/2015 2:16:48 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 9 replies
    wsj ^ | July 17, 2015 3:36 p.m. ET | Justin Lahart
    Rents are rising fast, and that is driving up inflation.... Consumer prices rose by 0.3% last month from May, the Labor Department reported Friday, putting them 0.1% higher than a year earlier. That year-over-year figure was severely depressed by the drop in gasoline costs. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose 0.1% from May and were up 1.8% on the year. The annual gain in core prices would have been cut in half if it weren’t for a 3% increase in the cost of shelter that is being driven by increasing rents. That is because even though rents only...
  • Youthful Frozen Plains Cover Pluto’s Big ‘Heart’ – Spectacular New Images from New Horizons

    07/17/2015 2:00:57 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 48 replies
    universetoady.com ^ | on July 17, 2015 | Ken Kremer
    A vast, craterless plain of Plutonian ice no more than 100 million years old and centered amidst Pluto’s big ‘heart’ was unveiled in spectacular new imagery taken by NASA’s resounding successful New Horizons mission, during its history making rapid transit through the Pluto-Charon binary planet system barely three days ago, on Tuesday, July 14. The jaw dropping new imagery was publicly released today, July 17, by NASA and scientists leading the New Horizons mission during a media briefing, and has already resulted in ground breaking new scientific discoveries at the last planet in our solar system to be visited by...
  • UCLA Health Cyber Attack Affects Data for Up to 4.5 Million Patients

    07/17/2015 12:17:58 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 3 replies
    ktla.com ^ | July 17, 2015 | by Melissa Pamer
    The records of to 4.5 million patients may have been affected by a cyberattack on the UCLA Health network, but there’s no evidence individuals’ information was accessed, the health care system announced Friday. The attack accessed parts of a computer network that held patient data, but there’s “no evidence at this time that the cyber attacker actually accessed or acquired any individual’s personal or medical information,” UCLA Health said in a statement. The attack accessed parts of a computer network that held patient data, but there’s “no evidence at this time that the cyber attacker actually accessed or acquired any...
  • ISS crew shelters from space junk

    07/16/2015 7:54:33 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 8 replies
    dw.com ^ | July 16, 2015
    A "close pass" by orbiting junk has forced the International Space Station's crew to scramble into its attached Soyuz capsule. It is the fourth time in ISS's 15 years that a collision risk has prompted such precautions. Three astronauts briefly fled the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday as a fragment of a former Soviet weather satellite flew by. They sheltered in a Soyuz spacecraft, which normally transports crew members to and from Earth. A space industry source quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax claimed that US space monitors had spotted the space junk "very late." That had left...
  • Facebook’s Oculus to Pay About $60 Million for Gesture-Control Firm Pebbles

    07/16/2015 1:48:46 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 5 replies
    wsj ^ | Orr Hirschauge
    Oculus, the virtual-reality headset maker that Facebook bought last year, said Pebbles “will be joining the hardware engineering and computer vision teams at Oculus to help advance virtual reality, tracking, and human-computer interactions,” the company said on its blog. It didn’t disclose a price tag, but one person familiar with the matter said it was around $60 million. ... Pebbles has recently integrated its technology into the virtual-reality headset developed by Facebook’s Oculus VR, enabling users to interact with the device via hand and finger gestures. Unlike competing gesture-identification technologies, Pebbles’ enables users to see images of their own arms...
  • Three-tailed Comet Q1 PanSTARRS Lights Up Southern Skies

    07/16/2015 1:10:38 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 4 replies
    universe today ^ | July 16, 2015 | Bob King
    Call it the comet that squeaked by most northern skywatchers. Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS barely made an appearance at dawn in mid-June when it crept a few degrees above the northeastern horizon at dawn. Only a few determined comet watchers spotted the creature. Two weeks later in early July it slipped into the evening and brightened to magnitude +4. But decreasing elongation from the Sun and bright twilight made it virtually impossible to see. Now it’s returned — with three tails! After taunting northerners, it’s finally come out of hiding, climbing into the western sky during evening twilight for observers...
  • [Seaweed] that tastes of BACON....is packed with antioxidants but tastes of pork

    07/15/2015 7:04:03 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 24 replies
    Daily Mail ^ | Jack Milner
    A succulent red seaweed has been created that is packed full of protein, but unlike any other 'superfood' proclaimed as the world's next culinary saviour, you might actually want to eat this one. And that's because it tastes just like bacon. The new strain of dulse is a variation of a seaweed that grows in the wild along Pacific and Atlantic coastlines and is sold in dried form as a nutritional supplement. Researcher Chris Langdon and colleagues at Oregon State University's (OSU) Hatfield Marine Science Center patented the new strain of seaweed after working on for the past 15 years....
  • New Horizons Makes Major Discoveries: Young Ice Mountains on Pluto and Crispy Young Chasms on Charon

    07/15/2015 5:14:29 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 24 replies
    univesetoday ^ | July 15, 2015 | Ken Kremer
    Scientists leading NASA’s historic New Horizons mission to the Pluto system announced the first of what is certain to be a tidal wave of new discoveries, including the totally unexpected finding of young ice mountains at Pluto and crispy clear views of young fractures on its largest moon Charon, at a NASA media briefing today (July 15) at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. A treasure trove of long awaited data has begun streaming back to Mission Control at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to the mouth watering delight of researchers and NASA. With the first ever...
  • FEMA is planning for an earthquake that would devastate the Pacific Northwest, killing...

    07/15/2015 4:47:55 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 130 replies
    <p>To the north of California's famous San Andreas fault is a less known, but possibly more deadly, fault line. The Cascadia subduction zone runs some 700 miles from northern California to Vancouver.</p> <p>In a deeply reported article for The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz tells the tale of how this fault lies dormant for periods of 243 years, on average, before unleashing monstrous tremors. The Pacific Northwest is 72 years overdue for the next quake, which is expected to be between 8.0 and 9.2 in magnitude.</p>
  • 'True Detective' Season 2 Is Halfway Over And It's Still Unclear What Is Happening

    07/14/2015 8:11:13 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 26 replies
    forbes ^ | 7/14/2015
    There is worthwhile, cinematic television happening on the margins of True Detective – stunning aerial shots of tangled Los Angeles freeways, a California Split-esque low-stakes poker room, musical homages to Twin Peaks. But the closer you get to the show’s center, where a cohesive narrative should be decipherable, you’re drowning a murky puddle of obtuse yet self-important storytelling. ... We know far less about the myriad characters tied up in show’s oblique central plot points: A murder mystery, corruption, drug trafficking, gambling – Nic Pizzolatto is hitting all the crime procedural tropes, but halfway through the season, he hasn’t created...
  • Caught on Video: Blue Angels’ Florida Flyby Buzzes Beachgoers, Sends Umbrellas Flying

    07/14/2015 3:31:52 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 26 replies
    A video uploaded to YouTube by MrJasonmx3 shows Angel #5 doing a low fly-by. While the aircraft did not appear to be at unsafe altitude, it was close enough to the ground to send tents and umbrellas flying in the air. According to reports, the maneuver was performed by Lt. Cmdr. Mark Tedrow. Tedrow is a Pennsylvania native who has been with the Blue Angels since September 2011. The performance occurred July 11.